The recent wave of mini-desktops leads us to reconsider one of our favorites.

We've been covering quite a few mini PCs lately, and there's one that always comes up in the comments: Apple's Mac Mini. Apple started selling tiny desktops with this name in 2005, and it's been the cheapest way to buy a Mac ever since. It's also nearly the only Mac that Apple didn't update in 2013.

Apple hasn't updated the design of the Mini since 2010, when it introduced the aluminum unibody design the computer still uses today. It measures 7.7 inches squared and is 1.4 inches high, which is still pretty small by desktop standards but positively huge compared to computers like the Intel NUC (4.4 by 4.6 by 1.4 inches) or Gigabyte Brix Pro (4.5 by 4.4 by 2.4 inches). The presence of faster, more tightly integrated chips makes it easier to cram even more performance into even less space than was possible just a few years ago. The next Mac Mini we see may well be even smaller than before.

But just because things can get smaller doesn't always mean that they should. We have no idea when or even if Apple is planning to refresh the Mac Mini, or what that refresh will look like when it comes. But we can look at wider trends in the PC industry, at advances in CPUs and other system components, and at what Apple is doing with its other Macs to make a case for (and against) a mini-er Mac Mini.

Shrinking the Mini

Enlarge/ Imagine one of these in unibody aluminum with an Apple logo on top, and you come pretty close to what a next-generation Mac Mini could look like.

Andrew Cunningham

Those first aluminum unibody Minis had to make room for a few components that either have gone or are going out of vogue. It ditched its slot-loading optical drive in the mid-2011 model, and 2.5-inch spinning hard drives are slowly receding not just from Apple's Macs, but from all high-end PCs everywhere. Leaving out components like this is part of why NUC-like systems can get so tiny—there's no optical drive, and the smallest models omit any kind of 2.5-inch drive bay in favor of thin SSDs on small cards, like the ones you'd find in a laptop.

Apple could save a substantial amount of space by switching to these smaller drives, and it already has in almost all of its other Macs. The MacBook Air, Retina MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro have all switched to PCI Express-based SSD cards, and they're available in the 2013 iMac either as a standalone option or alongside a larger hard drive in a Fusion Drive configuration. In fact, even if the Mac Mini stays the same size, we wouldn't be surprised if it picked up a PCIe slot to accommodate these kinds of SSD cards, since the current Mac Mini's 2.5-inch SSDs only come in slower SATA III variants.

Other hardware has progressed quite a bit too. Some versions of Intel's Haswell chips integrate the system chipset on to the same package as the CPU, saving space on the motherboard and allowing for less complicated cooling fans. If the Mini skips a generation of Intel CPUs, the next-generation Broadwell chips are sure to continue to expand on this trend. Currently, the only chips with integrated chipsets are dual-core chips intended for Ultrabooks and high-end tablets, and Apple's current Mac Minis use standard dual- and quad-core laptop chips with separate chipsets. As we see in the NUC, though, the Ultrabook parts have improved enough in performance that they could conceivably deliver decent desktop performance. Even fully fledged quad-core desktop chips like the Core i7-4770R can fit in a Mac Mini-esque chassis—you wouldn't necessarily have to sacrifice performance to make the computer smaller.

The last reason why Apple might go for a smaller Mac Mini? The company likes to make its desktops smaller and more streamlined, even if it comes at the cost of features some of its customers like. We saw it first with the 21.5-inch 2012 iMac, which used a slower hard drive and removed its user-accessible RAM slots in the name of thinness. It happened again with the 2013 Mac Pro, which is still an incredibly powerful workstation but has given up most of its internal expandability to fit in its new case. A new, smaller Mac Mini would probably still be a decent computer, but Apple is all about the PC-as-an-appliance. The current Mac Mini has user-accessible RAM and two drive bays, but that's no guarantee that the next one will.

Maintaining the status quo

Enlarge/ The Mac Mini's internal power supply is one reason why it's as big as it is.

There's certainly room for the Mini to get smaller, but Apple has a few compelling reasons to keep the Mini just the size it is.

First and foremost is the current model's integrated power supply. Pre-2010 Mac Minis came with a power brick that was maybe a third of the size of the system it powered, and both the NUC and the Brix Pro are as small as they are because they include their own sizable power bricks. To make the computer part of a Mac Mini smaller than the current one is wouldn't be difficult; to make one with an integrated power supply significantly smaller is more difficult. It's not a gigantic component, but it takes up space and generates heat that would both need to be accounted for.

There's a chance Apple could ignore this and release a mini-er Mini that goes back to an external power supply. This isn't usually how Apple works, though—moving the power supply into the Mac Mini's chassis was presumably done for a reason, and when Apple makes design decisions like this, it doesn't usually reverse them. All three of the company's desktops completely eschew external power bricks and have for years. That's not likely to change.

Enlarge/ These mini-desktops have smaller footprints than the Mac Mini, but the external power bricks add to their overall volume.

Andrew Cunningham

The next consideration has to do with the way the Mac Mini is positioned. Apple killed its Xserve rack-mounted server back in 2011, and the special "Mac Pro Server" configuration died with the old gigantic chassis. In lieu of those offerings, Apple will sell you a Mac Mini Server for $999 that includes a quad-core CPU instead of a dual-core one and a second hard drive installed in the computer's second drive bay. Setting these drives up in a mirrored RAID configuration provides some basic data redundancy that should really be considered a bare minimum for a server product.

Apple's server software can really run on any Mac, so strictly speaking there's no need for a dedicated server product. But the Mac Mini Server (a consumer computer modified to be better-suited to server-y tasks) really seems to be made to run OS X Server (a consumer operating system modified to be better-suited to server-y tasks). Apple has given up on the enterprise server market, but offering a computer that's meant to be a server fills an important niche in its lineup, both for iOS and OS X-centric small businesses and Windows-centric IT shops that need to be able to manage a few iPhones or Macs. A smaller Mac Mini that couldn't offer the same features wouldn't be as good of a fit, and the way Apple manages its supply chain means it will probably want to stick to using one chassis for every possible Mini. Building a separate enclosure just for the Mac Mini Server isn't likely to happen.

Our final argument in favor of the Mini staying the way it is: the computer just doesn't get all that much attention from Apple. The company doesn't usually break out sales of specific models, but we already know that iPhones and iPads outsell Macs by a huge margin, and we can safely assume that Mac laptops outsell Mac desktops since we know that to be the case in the wider PC industry. It took five years for the Mini to get its first significant redesign, whereas most Macs are redesigned every three to four years. The Mini just isn't a big enough revenue generator to merit a ton of Apple's attention, and we think the company would take an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to the current design when adding Haswell or Broadwell CPUs.

Like so much speculation about Apple's future plans, take all of this with a grain of salt—we don't know anything about a new Mac Mini that you don't know, so the best we can do is use Apple's past behavior to predict its future behavior. If you want (or don't want) a smaller Mac Mini, duke it out in the comments below and we'll run a follow-up with your thoughts in a few days.

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites